Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads

My review was written in March 1983 after a screening at New Directors/New Films series at Midtown Manhattan screening.

Titled after the neon sign above the community gathering spot, "Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads" is a diverting fictional student film by 25-year-old Spike Lee. Filmed as a master's thesis project using student crew and pro thesps, hour-long opus is well-lensed as a slice of life of black people coping with neighborhood problems and the influence of the numbers racket.

After his partner Joe (Horace Long) is murdered fro skimming off the barbershop's numbers trade, Zachariah (Monty Ross) takes over the haircut business, but finds no customers when he tries to steer clear of the rackets. His social worker wife Ruth (Donna Bailey) places one of her charges, a youngster nicknamed Teapot (Stuart Smith), as a helper in the shop, and everyone prospers as Zachariah agrees to let numbers kingpin Nicholas Lovejoy (Tommie Hicks) re-establish the site as a local betting parlor.\ With filmmaker Spike Lee glossing over the moral crises, Zack eventually takes a stand against the rackets and pic's open ending offers no solution eo everyman's dilemma in trying to survive (or escape) a harsh, limiting environment. Eschewing the sex and violence cliches of blaxploitation gangster films, Lee delivers a friendly portrait of blakc folkways that, except for the convincing street language and wit, is probably too mild to capture a sizable audience.

With the married lead characters a trifle unconvincing, film's best role (in an all-black cast except for one bit part) is numbers magnate Nicholas Lovejoy (said to be patterned after the early career of Cleveland's fight promoter Don King), well-enacted as a cool, smooth philosopher by Tommie Hicks.

Ernest Dickerson's camerawork and other tech credits are pro quality, and film is aided by a jazz score by the director's father, Bill Lee.

Joes Bed-Stuy Barbershop is Spike Lee's thesis film for NYU graduate school. With this film it is clear that Spike Lee would go on and make better and greater films. Spike Lee's film about a barber shop centers around the main character Zack. Zack takes over the barbershop after Joe is mysteriously murdered. But it becomes apparent that Zack will follow in Joe's footsteps down the wrong path. The movie is a glimpse into the world of an urban jungle where it's survival of the fittest whether you like it or not.

Joe's Bed Stuy Barbershop, which you can see (for now) thanks to the wonder of youtube, is imperfect yet surely one of the most assured "student" films of its time. Really, there are quotes around "student" as, simply put, I am sure if one watches this not knowing it was the Thesis project of the one and only Spike Lee (the first "Joint" and already a 40 Acres and a Mule production), like if it aired in some Independent art house theater, I doubt many would question it as a legitimate (albeit low budget) gritty crime drama production.

It's a slim slice of Neo-Noir about Zachariah Homer, average guy working as a barber who gets under the thumb of a downright and *very* cool as a cucumber kind of gangster (Tommy Redmond, a different role by a mile than what he'd do for Lee a few years later in She's Gotta Have It but no less engaging, overcoming a clichéd personality through downplaying it all), and how easily people can be corrupted by the promise of protection and money.

I'd almost say you wouldnt feel crazy to call it a failed TV pilot given the length. My first impression is to say this simply has... swagger - and Lee and Dickerson know how to make the Brooklyn streets overloaded with personality and grit and vivacity. While you can't necessarily overlook some of the scenes that feel a little less substantial - the 2nd tier story with the social worker who frets and tells her man to not get involved with the Numbers, and I wonder if this would have benefitted from black and white stock over color - there's so much that is naturally involving because of Lee's attention and emphasis on memorable attitude, a community in flux, but not in a direction that is too self consciously cool, if that makes sense.

In brief, a strong, modest example of style and substance coming together, and of course it helps more than a bit that Lee has his exceptional father on the score.